Teabaggers literally do not understand American Revolutionary History

From Bob Cesca's awesome site comes this video of a teabagging wingnut named Rick Barber running for Congress from Alabama's 2nd district.



Barber illustrates a point I've been trying to make: teabaggers and wingnuts either do not or choose not to understand U.S. history, especially the history of the American Revolutionary Government. The premise is that he's sitting down with a group of Founding Fathers and explaining to them how bad things are today. Rick's problem is that he makes excellent hyperbole, but he's almost universally wrong on his facts. He wouldn't pass my 9th grade American History class.

Let's dissect his issues:
He starts off with "and I would impeach him"
Clearly meaning President Obama, my question to Barber and the baggers is: "on what grounds?" The bogus nonsense about him being Kenyan? Because you don't like what he's done? Because he's black? My guess is that the last one is closest to the truth.

Barber complains about an income tax, that we have to report what we earn to the government
While it's true that there was no income tax or IRS in Washington's day, it is a bald-faced lie that Washington opposed taxes. Washington almost universally supported the ideas of Alexander Hamilton. The leading Federalist of his day, Hamilton believed in a government big enough to enforce the rules that he felt needed to be placed for the common good. This included a national bank (to build good credit with foreign nations - a rousing success) and an excise tax on whiskey in 1791.

We were in major debt, mostly to France, from the Revolution. In order to pay off our debts, Hamilton proposed, and Washington backed, a tax on whiskey. This tax was anathema to farmers in western Pennsylvania, many of whom had never heard about the Revolution and didn't give a whit who was in charge. These farmers rioted, severely injuring several tax collectors and creating general mayhem. Washington, realizing that the states rights government under the Articles of Confederation fell because Shay's Rebellion had created the (real) perception that the government couldn't keep the peace, knew he had to act decisively. And so Washington put his uniform back on, and with his former aide-de-camp Hamilton, led the U.S. military into western PA to force the farmers to pay the tax and acknowledge the supremacy of the federal government at the barrel of a gun.

So much for an anti-tax, states rights Washington.

He decries an "All powerful separate court system"
Wrong, wrong, wrong. One, the court system is not all-powerful. Checks and balances my friend. They exist. Show me where the courts have run roughshod on your rights over the will of the legislative and executive branches.

Two, yeah, it IS a separate court system, as directed by the same Founding Fathers Barber is hallucinating about meeting. Three branches, as proposed and approved by a very states rights-leaning James Madison.

Complains that the IRS can perform it's duties "without representation"
Really? The IRS was created in it's quasi-current form by the 16th Amendment after it's initial inception by Republican Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. The 16th Amendment was lawfully proposed by progressive Republican Theodore Roosevelt and approved by a lawfully-elected (yes, elected!) Congress via the mechanics of the Constitution.

Furthermore, Congress has the power to eliminate the IRS anytime it sees fit. That it hasn't doesn't make the IRS illegal.

Barber can dislike the IRS (I do, though for different reasons, I'm sure), but he can't claim usurpation of power. Congress created it and Congress makes the rules for it. It didn't generate itself out of a little ball of evil sent to earth by aliens via asteroid.

We are entitled to our own opinions, but not our own facts.

"IRS is going to force us to buy health insurance"
No, they're not. A lawfully passed piece of legislation may force you to buy health insurance (the same way you're forced to buy auto insurance), and the IRS may be directed to enforce that edict via that same lawful legislation. But a direction to enforce is much different than "the IRS forcing us", which sounds like more implied usurpation.

Wrong again. Not liking it isn't the same as illegal.

Health care + government = "cram it down our throats"
What IS it with teabaggers and cramming stuff down their throats? Come up with a different euphemism. Of course, they named themselves teabaggers, so wha'da'ya want?

"You gentlemen (referring to the mystically-gathered Fathers) revolted over a tea tax. A TEA TAX!"
Oversimplified bullshit. They revolted over a litany of minor taxes because those taxes were placed by a government over which they had no say. It wasn't the taxes, it was that they had no say in those taxes. There is a HUGE difference here: as English citizens, they were used to paying taxes. The growing problem was a lack of say in the government that placed those taxes.

Further, it was frustruation that those taxes were going to pay for England's wars in Europe that were accomplishing nothing good here. These wars were sucking us in to conflicts (The French and Indian War) that had nothing to do with this continent. They were wrecking our economy and we didn't think we should be obligated to fund them.

But it was also about many events besides taxes. It was the feeling that, after almost 170 years here we had earned the right to self-determination (as Thomas Paine said "It was absurd for an island to rule a continent"). It was about alienation from Britain and a feeling that we were really no longer English. Any ties we had were residual.

It was about mercantilism, that England was using us as a cash-generating ATM. They told us who we could buy from and who we could sell to and at what prices. Mercantilism and the Navigation Acts, over which we had no electoral say, caused a lot of law-abiding families to have to resort to criminal smuggling.

And it was a bit about hooliganism. Sam Adams and the Sons of Liberty were intimidating bullies. Not that they didn't have a valid point, but they were roughnecks looking for an excuse to pick a fight. The Tea Act (and more importantly, the Stamp Act) and the lack of representation in Parliament were those excuses. The Boston Massacre and the propaganda created by Paul Revere, silversmith and member of the Sons, was the spark that blew the powderkeg.

Argue the merits of the Revolution all day, but there is no tax or law on the books in America that has not been lawfully passed by your representatives in Congress and signed by the President as proscribed by the Constitution.

Rick Barber and his wingnut friends might not like the laws - hell, there are lots of them I don't like. But that doesn't mean I get to cry "unfair! illegal!". Barber has representation in Congress that he is allowed to petition for redress of any perceived grievances. He is, obviously, allowed to run for Congress to bring his idiotic views to light.

This situation of "I don't like the laws, so they must be illegal" is so different from the complaints of the Sons of Liberty. The American colonists literally had no representation in Parliament (not representation that they disagreed with like the teabaggers, they literally had no representation). This claim would be laughable if there weren't so many uneducated schmucks buying into the Palin/Fox/Beck line of horseshit.

"Gather your armies"
Barber might want to educate himself on the term "sedition". It means to encourage the overthrow of one's own government. This phrase, "gather your armies", like so much of the wingnuttia lexicon, treads ever so close to that seditious line.